Ravenloft DM'ing Advice

getting the job done
a.k.a.
"now what do i do with these guys?"

Hello again. Decided to look for some advice from the DM's point of view, huh? I have two different classes of advice for you, beginning DMing and Been There advice. I've been running Ravenloft for a loooooong time, and have found a few things need to be discussed, and most of them involve players.
Before we even start, let's get something straight. I hate the hardbound book, and think it is one of the worst things TSR decided to do to Ravenloft before they folded. They got rid of Azalin, and eviscerated the Lands of the Core. My advice, stick with a boxed set, if you can find it. The maps are in color and far more clear, there is better background on the domains. I just glanced at the big black book, that I will admit, but several DM's in our gaming group agreed with my summation, and they had spent money on it.
If you have a post-Grand Conjunction boxed set, do some serious consideration on what to put into the Great Rift. I myself put a nastly little domain ruled by the feared Darklord Raistifist (A combination of Raistilan and Fistdandalus (sp??) in one body) and full of Krynn peasants and draconains. Most DM's I know of fill the Great Rift with domains of their own devising.
Addtion as of 2003-Ravenloft 3E existance...
OK, let's admit it...
The map isn't exactly what we expected. Go out, and get ahold of the old 2E boxed set maps. Those still work great.
The domains have gone through some major alterations.
My advice, rework it from the ground up, to fit your campaign.
Otherwise..... Well, you're on your own.

NOVICE ADVICE This might take a bit of work, but you will find it well worth it. Take every single magic item in the DMG and divide the amount of XP they are worth into 50,000, rounding up. That is how many of that type of item exist in Ravenloft completely. A 400 XP potion of Extra Healing exists 630 times. That means that there will be a total of 126 potions of Extra Healing floating around the place at one time, and accessable. Not too many, when you get right down to it. Items expended will be created again, and do not count the expendables put out in modules.
Of course, there can also be 50 +1 swords out there, but if you think of how many are sealed up in tombs (We'll say 18), how many are in the hands of powerful agents of evil (let's say 12), how many are owned by the Vistani (Let's say 8), and how many are known of, but not held by anyone (Let's say 4), and finally, how many are owned by other NPC's (Let's say the remaining 8). Not too hard, was it. If you have a home computer, do what I did, label where all the magic items are, that way I could drop clues to high powered magic items if I thought the PC's needed them.
Decide how the weather is during certain seasons in each Domain. I make Lamordia much like mediavel Europe, primarily cold and snow covered, and Barovia like a Slavic country, beuatiful in the summer and spring, miserable in the winter, with hard work going on in the fall.
The weather is VERY important, since weather can be a great limiter to the PC's. A +5 Vorpal Holy Avenger of Sharpness Wounding and Dancing doesn't do shit against a blizzard, and can't cut through moist, clinging fog. Nothing like a frozen Paladin laying on the side of a mountain, frozen to death in his armor +30 and shield +90, clutching his +19 Holy Avenger of Sharpness, Wounding and Dancing that scores a crit on a 1 or better on a die 4 in one dead, frozen hand.
Make up some villians. They do not need to be omnipotent or crassly overpowering, unless you want them to be. Try inventing an evil organizations, just one or two, including a few of those NPC's. Make sure the villians have a history, motives, desires and challenges to face. Give them unusual weapons (How about an evil Krynn elf fighter, who carries bolos and flensing knives) and perhaps even unusual mounts (How about if our evil Krynn Elf rides a War Ostrich, complete with the proper ornamental strappings, saddle, and make him proficient in a riding lance, preferably a barbed one) Write down notes on how this NPC fights. Try to give them each a different fighting style.
For example: Ralts, Undead Knight of great power, has a tendancy to wade in and start smashing, taking on two or three targets at a time, and always hitting someone who goes down one final time to make sure. Javelle, Blade Dancer of great beuaty, likes to strike from ambush, surprise, and snipe at people. When confronted directly, she moves around quite a bit, always staying mobile, never letting the PC's gain the upper hand in positioning, and going for wizards and theives first. If Ralts pulls back, he always leaves the PC's a parting gift, usually a Delayed Blast Fireball, while Javelle cripples a few people and runs off, hardly ever applying the coupe-de-gras.
Each of them have a tottally different fighting style. Ralt's uses his fearsome battle skill and overwhelming presence as a weapon, while Javelle stays mobile and never counts on anything to be as it appears. They are far more different than just a total of stats and sex. This keeps the PC's from getting one strategy and using it on everyone. While a metal mesh net will seriously hamper Javelle, Ralts will just shred it and beat a few of them to death with it, and the PC's know this.
Villains are the mainstay of any adventure. They are your hardest things to maintain, but well worth it. My players still curse their villians names. "That bastard, I hate him!" Any of my players would run like hell if any of the major foes ambushed them in the bathroom, and more than one has. Even new, and to me, most likely temporary, villians are approached carefully by my players. They like to research them, watch them, and hate not getting to choose their own battlefields. My villains are the same way, and most of the time, when they are defeated, niether side chose the battlefield.
Detail on the lands adds much. In Darkon they adopt gravestones. The PC's have seperate backgrounds for when their PC's enter Darkon, since they have a completely different background while in Azalin's domain. While in Darkon they think that they were born there, have home villages, deceased parents, and others know of them. They get to know the lands, examining the details intently.
More detail, however, will be a lot of help. Decide on the modes of dress in the various domains, make up monetary types (Ie: Barovian Gold Eagle and Darkonian Gold Crown), make up different products available in the various domains. (Ie: Sithican Peach Brandy, Lamordian Boots and Wool Cloaks), different speech patterns, different ways of dealing with strangers (Ie: Outlanders, Outriders, Travellers, Journeyers), different modes of dress (Ie: Darkon's habits of knee length tunics, belted at the waist for men, loose for the women for peasants) and best of all, different foods (Ie: Barovian Meat Pie and Invidia Plum Cobbler) depending on the domain. These little details will add much flavor and color to your campaign.
These may seem like useless details, but you can find that there will be a lot of options opening up for the campaign. During the Cauldron of Blood, one of the clues was the fact that one of the Blooded Ones wore Lamordian Boots (easy noticed by their tread) ate Kartakan Meat Pie at every inn, and drank Sithican Peach Brandy. When they busted into a room and found several bottles of the brandy, an extra pair of boots, and Barovian clothing, they knew that they were right on the heels of that Blooded One. Little details amount to quite a bit.
Despite what the modules seem to show: Do not pit the PC's against Darklords constantly! By doing that, you lessen the fear of Darklords, and non Darklord villians seem weak and pathetic. By using non Darklords, when one does show up, the players themselves will get slightly panicy. Save the headbeing of the domains for major plot twists. When Soth arrived during the Soul of Fire, ordering the characters to kneel before him, they did, knowing that foes like Ralts and Javelle were tough, and honestly feeling that Soth would whip the ass clean off of them, so the players fear carried over to the PC's.
Decided how each domain acts toward one another. Decide on the political climate. Are Azalin and Strahd still engaging in cloak and dagger against one another, or do they have a shaky truce trying to further their own ends? Is Adam plotting against Dr. Mordenhiem, or is he observing what the doctor is doing, watching patiently like a spider?
Add a holy order of some type that is found everywhere. Whether or not the holy order is good or evil is irrelevant at this time. (Example: I have the Holy Order of the Silent Word, a group of monks who have taken vows of silence. They know sign language and are literate in most, if not all, of the native Ravenloft languages, along with many outer langauges, ie Thorass or Oearth languages. They collect writings and legends, and will allow the PC's to peruse their stores of tomes for a small fee. A Temple of Blessed Silence is in most major cities, and Darklords consider them inviolate, since they make no judgements on anyone and allow anyone, no matter what the alignment or political persuasion to peruse thier records for the proper tithe) The Holy Order should fill a niche needed by the PC's or the campaign, but remember, a strictly Lawful Good order would have to be underground in many realms, and would be persecuted in a lot of places (There's a good campaign hook, attatch the PC's to this order and they must protect it.) if not exterminated by dark forces of great power.
Write up a price list for basic services, then adjust it for each domain. In Lamordia, Barovia, and Darkon, there should be some mining, so metal items will be cheaper. Of course, metal items might be pretty damn cheap in Keening! Keep in mind the current state of the domain, also.
Keep carefull notes as your campaign progresses. Write down who the party has befriended, and who they have offended. One bad move can create a lifelong enemy (Read the section on Javelle, the party made her!!) These notes will be invaluable as the campaign progresses since sooner or later the PC's actions will bite them on the ass.
Make a safe place for the PC's. My PC's have the estate of Duane Charlemagne (One of Charlemagne's sons), and there they hide out to heal up, ID items, ect; they also have the village of Sommerset, who look at the party as some kind of heroes. Without this safe place to retreat to once in a while, the players will get discouraged and figure "Why bother."
Create some friendly NPCs. Ones you plan on not mangling or having them betray the party. Lifelong friends are important to PC's. Of the friendly PC's, mangle or destroy only 25% of them at the maximum. Yes, it is terrifying when a long time friend turns into a vampire, but if you do it to every single friend the PC's make, pretty soon they will stop making friends, and that can hurt the game.
All of this may seem tedious to you, but believe me, it will turn out well worth it. LONG TIME RAVENLOFT DM'S So the campaign seems to be getting stale. You've run through every module put out, dozens of home brewed modules, and now the Domain of Dread seems pale and boring.....
First thing first. Set aside the campaign, and adventure for a while in another campaign world. Familiarity breeds contempt. True to anything, even this game.
Discuss with your players what they want. Who knows, maybe they want to take on Strahd, try to bring him down, or perhaps they want to match wits with Harkon Lucas, or maybe they even want to finally have it out with the big bad guy in the campaign.
We ran into this. The Servants of the Skull had been shattered, Ralts was cast down and in hiding, Javelle, Jade, Lhere Khan, and others dead for good, and the PC's were pretty high on the hog. The party was trying to figure out where to go, so we sat down and discussed it. It turned out that without the Servants of the Skull, they felt like only the Darklords remained. So I came up with new villians, different ones with different MO's and styles and goals.
New Villians! Gather up all your villians and take a look at them. Have they been running on a theme? I have a bad habit of getting my villians together like a military unit, with good cohesiveness and teamwork, with clear cut goals and MO's. If you find you have a common theme, try to come up with a couple who do not fit the theme. I ended up creating the Zodiac Killer. A loner who was perfectly normal, only his powers checks, and was a creature of Ravenloft. It took the players nearly a year to catch this guy, all because he did not fit a theme. The Zodiac Killer wasn't even human, he was a lowly kobold, quite a difference for my human supremist attittude. Another group was a couple of guys that kind of had the same goals, but acted like a bunch of crack heads. Rent the movie "Blood and Concrete" starring Billy Zane. A villian like that twisted bastard Bart drives the PC's nuts. Dancing around, showing up when you least expecting it, just ruining shit, getting beat up, and running off.
New Plots! What kind of plots have you run so far? Dungeon crawls? Modules? Pitting the party against Darklords and their minions? One shot, weekend or single night adventures? Murder mysteries? The Monster of the Moor types? Gather your notes and take a look at what kind of adventures you have been running as of late. Change it, so that the plot is different. This is a difficult one for me, since I keep track and try to alternate the types of plotlines I run. Mix two types. Add The Haunting of Morella into Dracula, with the reborn Morella being Dracula's one true love, and now you have a nightmare.
Talk to your players. I can not stress this enough. Find out what they want, but keep it in the flavor of Ravenloft. My current group likes the slow, building adventures, where the next one is actually starting as the current one comes to a close. Little adventures taking place during the big job. (Right now, they are in the middle of Death Knocks Twice while taking care of The Caudlron of Blood Reborn, with new villians, new plots, and a new Cauldron)
Another thing about Ravenloft to remember, is the fact that most horror flicks nowdays depend on lots of blood. I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream (And their sequels) may be scary to people watching, but too many gamers would just buckle down and take care of it. Splattering blood against the table and gaming equipment isn't scary, it's kind of nauseating. The movie Blair Witch Project is perfect, isolation, lost, confusion, and they had no idea what happened to cause whatever it was to hunt them. Watch the Changleling, a spooky movie that fits right into it. Despite the blood, the old flick Monster Dog, with Alice Cooper, fits Ravenloft pretty good. Dawn of the Dead, on the other hand, really does not. If a player seperates his PC from the group, take them aside, and make the players wonder what happened. If the PC makes it back by himself, the players will be more than paraniod. After all, it could be a Loup-de-Faus, or a Doppleganger pretending to be the party member. The entire party got freaked out when a PC had left the party, I took the player aside, and after we returned, both me, the player, and the PC, I gave each of the other players a note stating that their PC's noticed a small, brownish red stain on the lapel of the PC who had just returned. They butchered the PC over a stain from a dripping Lamordian meat-stick, over BBQ sauce.
More than once, I eliminated a PC and did not even tell them. A PC went up to the graveyard by himself, climbed the fence, and began looking around. He got killed, but I told him he found nothing interesting, and let him go back to the party, not telling the player that his PC was dead. At a critical time, the player got a note: "Lightning Bolt the Paladin." The player sighed and did it, and then killed half the party. When asked what happened, the player figured that his PC got killed somewhere, and replaced.
Do not tell everything. If the PC's only find out about half the goings on, do not give away the rest. Tough for them if they missed vital information. That vital information may be important later in the campaign. The PC's missed the ring on Jean Tarrascone's hand during Night of the Walking Dead, and later, when they finally found out that the ring he was wearing was one of the few things that could actually hurt Plaything, they had to move Hell and High Water to get to it. Oops.
Do not repeat yourself. If your players keep breaking in on you when you try to describe a scene, then let them, and do not pick up your description. If someone wants it, pass them a note that you get back. Eventually they will learn, after the bad guy in the middle of the room butchers them a few times, since they were too worried about what was on the desk.
A player keeps trying to incur powers checks, like they want to play a Darklord. Well, too bad for them. I let them play it all the way to Level Five, but when they are The Beast, I play them. Because I take the PC away, between 3rd and 6th Powers Level, my players aren't too keen on getting powers checks, but you always get the guy who wants to play Villians and Victims. Who knows or cares why, but (s)he glorifies and wallows in evil acts and bloodshed. My advice, get rid of them, they'll be more trouble than they are worth. Do not let one person ruin the game for everyone.
Long, involved quests seem to peter out. Switch to quick and dirty ones for awhile, or string together a bunch of little ones, if you just can't stand being away from long quests.